3rd Annual Spring Children's Fun Day

We had perfect weather and a wonderful turnout of both kids and volunteers for our 3rd annual Spring Children's Fun Day. Thank you to EVERYONE who participated!! Kids decorated pots and planted flowers for Mom, and they also helped plant tomato and pepper plants in the Children's plots and 2nd food pantry plot. While we had them rolling their sleeves up and "digging in" they helped plant eggplant, pumpkins, watermelon and the first 2 rows of sweet corn in the freshly tilled communal area. Workers of all ages were treated to hotdogs, fruit, carrots, homemade cookies and lemonade.

We view the garden as a place to learn for many reasons. After giving the garden tour to several adults, two decided to try their hand at a plot. We look forward to cultivating new friendships!

Another learning experience came in the form of a personal apology: one of the neighborhood kids got caught pulling plants out. His mother sent him over to apologize while we were there. After he admitted what he and other kids had done, we gave him lunch and set him up to decorate a pot for his mother. We even asked him to look out for the garden to make sure no one else messed with it. He assured us that he would. It's good to know we have another new friend of the garden helping out!

We look forward to our fall social for the kids in October!

Our Garden is Growing - Expanding!

What a busy April work day at the garden! We are excited to announce that we have expanded the garden by 3 beds. This means that the two people on the waiting list don't have to wait any longer and we now have 24 full size beds. We got the three beds constructed and filled two with dirt and compost, we got the strawberry beds and potatoes covered in straw, and we tackled a ton of weeding. After a great work day we enjoyed a pot luck lunch and got out of the garden in plenty of time before the huge storms blew through.

The garden experienced a bit of vandalism a few weeks ago (kids had pulled out some of the young plants in several plots), so it was good to get everyone together pushing forward and renewing our sense of why we come there to begin with.

We are looking forward to the Kid's fun day in the garden the day before Mother's Day. We hope to educate more neighborhood kids about the importance of our community garden while giving them the opportunity to make a Mother's Day present!

Opening Garden Work Day for 2012!

Our opening garden work day was beautiful and sunny and the perfect setting to get us started this spring. Our wonderful group of volunteers met and tackled the following: weeded the orchard, weeded around the knock-out rose line, dug up all the strawberry plants to fill the beds with more dirt and replanted the strawberries just a little further apart, and filled several of the individual plots with more dirt necessary after a few years of settling.

This year we decided to change how we do lunch. Instead of one person bringing the lunch for the workday, we all brought a dish to share. We had a wonderful assortment and enjoyed each others' company after a morning of hard work.

Thank you to everyone who helped today and here's to a new season full of opportunity!

October Work Day - Harvest and Clean Up

Our 2011 growing season has ended and we had several gardeners on hand to assist in garden and plot clean up. We trimmed back the hedge perimeter, cut back the knock out roses, cleaned out individual and sponsor plots and added a good layer of mulch to the plots. Several gardeners even planted garlic to winter over. The weather was perfect for our last work day, and we ended the work day with a lunch of cheese broccoli soup and bread pudding.

Thank you to all of our gardeners for another successful year (even with the scorching summer!) For those that weren't able to make it, please remember to have your plot cleaned out by Thanksgiving.

Have a great fall and winter and we'll see you all back in the spring!

2011 Kid's Fall Social

We had a beautiful fall morning and a great turnout for our second annual Kid's Fall Social at OFW Community Garden. The garden offers 2 events per year free to children. Thank you to everyone who makes these events possible by helping our various fundraisers throughout the year!

Kids of all ages got to decorate mini-pumpkins, participate in a corn-on-the-cob eating contest, spit watermelon seeds and enjoy lunch in the garden with their families and new friends. The kids also learned about how composting works and had fun flinging cobs and rinds into the compost bin. Thank you to all that participated and we look forward to seeing you in the garden again!

Community Garden Fall Social Saturday October 15th!

July 2011 Garden Work Day

A minor break in the heat wave welcomed our gardeners yesterday morning, although it wasn't much relief. Julia, Gail, Irma, Sharon, Dwayne, Brian, and Dot joined us (along with the kids of course!) to a morning of weeding and mulching. How do weeds thrive so well in this heat!?! Larry and Brian worked on the tool shed and finished the roof. Many of our vegetables have not fared well in this heat. However the peppers are loving it! One thing that we've noticed is that people in the area have been picking vegetables from the individual plots. We'll have to put up a sign that says, "If you didn't plant it, please don't pick it."

We ended our day with a fantastic lunch for a hot day just as rain clouds rolled in. Julia prepared a build-it-yourself taco salad with all the fixings, and made  too good to be true blueberry lemon bars. Brian thought it was too hot to eat, but the rest of us shook our head at him as our mouths were too full to talk.

Thanks to everyone for their sweat equity (literally!) at the garden. We're all looking forward to the cooler days of fall planting!

June 2011 Garden Work Day

 

 

Beautiful weather greeted our morning workers and we managed to finish before the rain started. Dwayne, Freddie, Dot, Sue, Gail, Brian, Trudy, Julia and Irma all helped with weeding and general maintenance. Freddie tilled the community area, and Larry worked on the roof of the tool shed. Dot provided a wonderful and healthy lunch (our favorite part of the work days!) and as usual, with our bellies full, we called the day a success.

The Jolley Trolley and the Ferguson Bicyclers came by for a tour, and we all played tour guides for a bit. It's always fun to show off our progress and hard work.

Thank you to everyone who helped, and those that came by to see what we have done in only our second growing season!!!!

May 2011 Garden Work Day

With lunch provided by Heidi and Martin (and fresh strawberry pie with strawberries from the garden!), many gardeners came out for some wheel-barrow fun and a cool morning to clean up the garden and enjoy the company of others. If only every workday could be cool and overcast! Thanks to everyone including Dwayne, Freddie, Sue, Gail, Irma and her sister, Gina and Clarence, Dot, Julia, Emily, Ed, Linda and Heidi and Martin. Also thanks to the Bike riders that stopped by, and several individuals just looking and asking questions.

It looks like this will be our first year of apples, and the grapes are tiny babies now, but it looks like we'll get loads of them in the late summer/fall. Perfect for wine making for a community garden get together! Also on the list of potential "finally" items, we may even finish the tool shed this summer!!

Thanks again for everyone supporting in person and in spirit. I can't believe how far this garden has come in such a short time, and kudos for EVERYONE that has made that happen over the past 3 years!

Children's Fun Day at the Garden - Mother's Day gifts

The Children's Fun Day at the OFW Community Garden was so much fun. Kids from all over came to decorate small tin pots and plant a flower for their Mothers or Grandmothers. They also got to see the strawberries growing and see the grapes in their infant stages. Leftover flowers were planted in the children's plots. Kids and adults enjoyed hotdogs, fruit, pasta salad and lemonade. Of course the dirt and the wood chip piles were perfect for playing "King of the Hill." It was too wet to till the community portion to plant sweet corn and the rest of the seeds we had planned, but that didn't deter the good mood of all of those involved. Thank you to all that participated, and we look forward to the next Children's Fun Day in the fall!

Gardeners Welcome Spring (?)

Turning over the beds

Ben checking out the tool shed structure

Overlooking the OFW Garden

Daruby garden before raised beds

Joe standing in front of the new raised beds in the SNOW!

It was time once again for the initial OFW Garden workday on the last Saturday of March. It was a blustery morning, but we managed to get the beds turned over, weeds pulled, (Thanks to Dot who did an excellent job of weeding all the Strawberry beds last week!) and the compost bins turned over. It was nice to be back in the garden among friends even if the weather was chilly! Thanks to Dwayne, Freddie, Martin, Julia, Dot, Brian, Trudy, John and Gail for the hard work and camaraderie.

We cut the morning short, and several of us headed over to Daruby Early Learning Center to assist Gateway Greening and Gail with the installation of 6 raised beds for the preschool. We enjoyed a chili lunch while waiting for the compost and lumber to be delivered. Then we completed our work just as SNOW started accumulating. There is a before and after shot above of Daruby's raised beds. Congrats to Gail and staff on having a proper garden to plant with the children!

We're looking forward to warmer weather on April's workday, and hope to get more planting completed as well as completing the tool shed. Thanks to everyone for their hard work!

October Work Day - Garden Clean Up

Our first official growing season has come to an end. Many of us spent the morning removing tomato and pepper plants from our own beds and sponsor plots, while others helped with the building of our cedar tool shed. It was a beautiful morning to be out in the garden and chatting about what we would all do the same or differently next year.

Thanks to everyone who helped, and a special thank you to Julia for providing our delicious lunch of vegetarian chili and peanut butter and chocolate brownies. In fact, thank you to each of you that provided lunch on our scheduled work days!!

As time permits we plan to finish the tool shed, shred the compost material and put straw down on the strawberries. For all you troopers this year, the good news is that it won't be nearly as much work next season but will still be as fun and rewarding!!!